Too bad this doesn’t appear to be licensed by Nintendo, but this Super Mario Bros. 3 Firefox Theme is very well done. I hope they don’t do anything about this.

To use this theme, just go download, install, restart the browser and then go to Add-Ins and choose themes and make it your default.

This is my first theme change for Firefox. I don’t usually get into theming and styling my workspace online. In fact, the last time I changed to a PC Magazine theme on one of our machines and wrote about it here, the feedback received was mostly negative. Most the Windows machines have the default theme. I never adjusted the look of the Mac either come to think of it.

Any other good themes to share for browsers, desktops, etc? Or do you, like me, tend to leave things the default?

With the most recent version of Opera browser and they offer a free step by step, no programming knowledge required, way of rolling your own Opera RSS widget for your blog called the Opera Widget Generator.

You can try the Hmm Opera widget created with this generator in less than two minutes by loading the homepage in Opera and clicking on the blue Opera widget icon in the URL window (pictured above). Then download and run and voila! You’ll see the most recent posts at MakeYouGoHmm.com. Nice thing about these Opera widgets is you can move them out of the browser window, so they don’t get in the way of browsing.

Now, go try rolling your own Opera widget.

I held out successfully until yesterday upgrading to Firefox 2.x. The reason being that I’ve been satisfied with the existing Firefox setup and extensions — ok, add-ons is what they’re being called now — I’m using and weren’t sure how many were compatible with 2.x. Also, I’ve learned over time and experience that being the first to upgrade can also have unintended consequences. So I cast my fears aside — whether legitimate or not — and installed version 2.0.

I’m probably echoing a long series of boos but this is a very unimpressive full version upgrade. I don’t like what they did with the tabbed browsing at all. Don’t want the close button on each tab and miss the shrinking tabs instead of the annoying arrows on both sides (the Tab Mix Plus add-in does ‘fix’ some of this by allowing reverting to a “traditional” style). One of my most used add-ins (screen capture) doesn’t work. With less add-ins, Firefox 2.x is leaking even more memory than 1.5.8. What a way to encourage people to switch to other browsers or downgrade. Reminds me a bit of what happened with Winamp after 2.x.

I realize there are tools to help me debug what add-ons are leaking and tutorials/tips/tricks for how to reduce Firefox memory leaks but all of this feels like I’m being the perpetual beta tester for every add-on developer and the Firefox team. Come on, developers, debug your stuff better before releasing!

This is a major drawback for Firefox over Opera which doesn’t have anywhere near these amount of memory leak issues (nor the amount of plugins, so that could partly explain it). It’s ridiculous for anyone to have 2GB of RAM and need to restart Firefox almost daily.

Before anybody gets on my case about being an add-on whore and that being my main problem (and that might indeed be a significant part of the problem), I have 15 add-ons currently installed:

Adsense Notifier
Colorzilla
Customize google
Download status bar
Leak Monitor
McAfee Site Advisor
Measure It
Screen Grab (to be uninstalled)
Search Status
Show IP
Signature
Skype Plugin for Firefox
stickis (testing)
StumbleUpon
Tab Mix Plus

If this is extreme compared to what most others are using (in terms of number of add-ons), I’m all ears for how others are better managing so they can stay productive? I could probably axe half these add-ons to get down to what I’m really using on a regular basis, but then there goes the functionality that I’ve enjoyed with Firefox. I’m sure there is some way to have my cake and eat it too, short of me debugging each of the add-ons and digging into the Firefox source code.

Anybody else having major Firefox memory leakage problems? For any Firefox add-ons developers that might be reading what steps are you taking before releasing your plugin to make sure it doesn’t have leakage problems?

Update 6:54pm PST: I see Sterling (link below) thinks all these add-ons are the main culprit too. Alright, I just uninstalled all 15 add-ons listed above and restarted Firefox. It loaded with 39,916k with a single tab open. I opened the minimum number of tabs that I typically work with which is five: two admin-related tabs, a Gmail tab, a reBlog (RSS reader) tab, and a browse tab and let things just sit.

Meanwhile, IE7 has been running in the background for a couple hours with a single tab and is using 28,248k memory. Will check back on this situation later or first thing tomorrow and update. I’m going to establish a baseline memory pattern and then start adding back the add-ons one at a time to establish which one(s) are the memory thieves.

Update 8:44pm PST: Firefox now using 84,124k. It has doubled in memory usage with no add-ons and a default 2.0 installation and an increase in one tab. IE7 with still one tab? 28,328.

11/30/2006 6:08am PST: Overnight with no further user activity on the machine, Firefox now, still with zero add-ons, using memory: 85,352k. As long as I don’t use it, it balances out. While typing this and working for 10 minutes, the load shot up to 94,212k. Also see comments below, I’m not the only one experiencing memory problems with Firefox 2.0.

11/30/2006 7:04am PST: Firefox now up to 108,940. Meanwhile, IE7 still at 28,472. Just for kicks, I decided to load up tabs in IE7 with the same pages and number of tabs that are sitting in Firefox. In fact, I added two additional tabs in IE7 and are using those to browse and work instead of Firefox.

11/30/2006: 8:44am PST: Exactly 12 hours since this browser experiment began. Firefox now at 110,372k has been minimized with the same tabs while I’ve been using IE7 which has shot up to 67,860k. I’m going to reboot the computer now and start fresh and see what happens over the next 12 hours.

Keep track of where your browser has been and for how long with the Firefox extension pageaddict which can be downloaded here. I’ve been checking this out for a couple days. It sort of reminds me of the Mac program Active Timer, but since it only encompasses how much time is spent at domains, it won’t be terribly useful for webmasters trying to divide up their work within individual websites. Also, if you look at the screenshot above you’ll see most of the time is spent at this website and my personal site which is wrong because I leave the post publishing window open and my personal site hosts the RSS reader I currently use (reBlog). If you forget to minimize the windows, it can also hose the numbers.

Some potential here, especially if better historical stats are provided.

Nathan at InsideMicrosoft compares how smooth Internet Explorer 7 makes adding custom search providers:

Any search engine, installed with little effort. No directory, no hoping your special site is listed. Just search, paste, name and click. I only wish Opera did this, and wonder why the hell Mozilla never figured this one out. Seriously, 9,219 search engines. Are they insane?

Some might recall Microsoft was criticized unfairly by Google for how difficult they supposedly made it to change default search. Nathan’s right, check out the IE7 adding custom search provider page. It doesn’t get much easier than this. Kudos to the IE7 team.

If you are reading this with Internet Explorer 7, Click here to add Hmm search. This will allow you to easily search across the archives of this blog conveniently within IE7. On the homepage under the search box there are quick links for the Google toolbar and adding to Firefox search dropdown too.

According to Microsoft they have heard us, and if you haven’t heard the Microsoft news of the day, the official version of Internet Explorer 7 has been released. If you’ve also stayed away from all the beta tests [Hmm IE7 Beta 2 review], the major thing you’ll notice visually is a revamped toolbar section — where is the home key?!?

Don’t get me wrong, the new menu area once you get used to it is an improvement, but under the hood it’s already sporting IE6 demons. Already reportedly shipping with an old Outlook Express bug that has been reported — mistakenly according to Microsoft — as a six month old IE7 vulnerability. The bug is fixed in Vista, which won’t be here for another couple months and an XP fix will be along a month from now. That’s right, don’t rush over to download IE7 — it will be coming via automatic download anyway — Outlook Express users. Add to the launch embarassment that Yahoo got their version of IE7 out first, complete with their own tweaks. I swear Hollywood couldn’t churn out a more lively script for how not to launch. Here we blow again, indeed.

I’m admittedly cynical over Internet Explorer after Microsoft turned its back on users and said they weren’t going to do anything new until Firefox lit a fire under their butts. Add to that a lot of me too, been there, done that ‘new’ features. IE7 feels more like “we’re catching up” than “we’re innovating” but hey, it’s better than IE6.

Faster? Yes. Sleeker? Yes. Better? A little, yes. Will it bring back those who switched to Firefox? Nope. Why not? One word: add-ons.

Room to grow in the add-on department
Yes, there are IEaddons, but the list isn’t comparable to the vast amount of Firefox plugins and is mixed with shareware and commercial offerings like Apple does with dashboard widgets. In fairness, you can check a box for “freeware only” but do that and watch the list become even smaller. For example, there are a grand total of 20 freeware privacy & security ieaddons compared to 148 for Firefox. From a developer perspective this is an advantage and opportunity so if you ask me as a developer which platform holds a better exposure opportunity the answer is Internet Explorer, but this post is written for users, not developers.

3% of Hmm readers are already using IE7, which includes me. Did I mention that I really am browsser agnostic? I will use IE7 about the same as I used IE6, which means lesser every day, but it will not go away until nobody uses IE any more (which won’t be anytime soon). The vast majority of those who get sucked into IE7 by November 1 by automatic update probably won’t care about any of the details herein.

How about you? Are you all over IE7? What are your favorite new features? Or are you mostly using a competing browser? I’ll admit that I am. I’ve moved past Internet Explorer as my primary browser — my browser of choice on Windows is Firefox. Maybe when Vista comes out I’ll be lured back, but right now I’m feeling a little Netscapish and blue E is but a fading memory.

Up until today I hadn’t used Skype’s click to call from web page function in a real world scenario. Since at home we now only have Skype I had a need to check on buying a replacement AC Adapter for one of our laptops. I visited the Best Buy website, clicked on store locator, typed in our zip code, found the store and then clicked on the link to generate a SkypeOUT call. The telephone number link was automatically converted using the Skype for Firefox extension.

We’ve since returned the phone I reviewed (stopped working) and are currently using a headset. Best Buy has a USB powered device that allows plugging in any standard phone for like $50 that we’re planning to buy. In the meantime, I’m getting used to using the phone and computer as one.

Checked out Radio Shack store locator and look at how easy it was to click and call:

If you run into one of those automated phone systems, you can use the Skype dialpad to punch in numbers. I realize this is probably old hat to regular SkypeOUT folks, but it was new to me. I can’t use any of those automated systems when calling through OnStar in my car because there is no dialpad.

Phone books in 2006
I don’t think traditional phone books are going anywhere any time soon, but today’s use of Skype and click to call inside web pages reminded me that technology can improve on processes and save time. Why would I go searching for a dead tree phonebook — when I had an internet connection (that’s the big part) — to find a number when I can just hit a company’s webpage and click a link? And the cost of this technology? About $40/year since skypeOUT calls inside the US are currently free. Progress.

Upon seeing ie7.com I instantly recalled the fate of Mike Rowe Soft.

Originally registered March 8, 1999 according to WHOIS. Maybe it was a premonition, Warner?

One of my favorite apps is Screen Calipers, but I noticed recently when downloading the new trial that the price went up over 30% (now $29.90) and they crippled the trial app further so you couldn’t make vertical pixel measurements. I guess this means there weren’t enough paid registrations? Here’s an alternative to measure pixel space using a Firefox extension for those who would like to have similar functionality for free: measure it.

Once the extension is installed it sits in the lower left of your Firefox status bar and can be invoked by clicking on the graph. Then draw with the sights a box around what you want to measure on screen. A box with the height and width in pixels will appear (shown in green above).

There is a big test approaching for Microsoft in 2007: can they earn back the trust of users? During Gnomedex Todd Bishop from the Seattle PI interviewed Blake Ross who co-created Firefox with Dave Hyatt. As you might expect, Ross provided some juicy Internet Explorer-related quotes. One of which is where he blames Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for being as the headline above says: ‘very directly responsible for adware and spyware.’

Lest we forget that Microsoft intentionally left the most popular brower in the world Internet Explorer gather dust, which later they would regret, apologize and are still trying to repair. Ross said he has seen IE7 and actually liked it but felt it would be a step or two behind Firefox 2.0.

2007 will be the most significant year in Microsoft’s recent history. They have Xbox 360 with a legitimate chance to become the #1 console gaming system — Sony is just letting this happen by being arrogant and not pricing their games or console affordably — not to mention Microsoft’s threatening micropayment strategy (Live Marketplace) if they would ever deploy that widespread. Then there is AdCenter with an opportunity to be either also ran or make a serious dent in the Google Adwords/Adsense territory, a completely revamped web strategy (under the ‘Live’ brand) and the launch of their next generation, but scaled back from original expectation Operating System: Vista.